Council to discuss hastening junk car relief

The Lubbock City Council will today take up consideration of an ordinance to hasten the process of enforcing junk car codes.

The ordinance, if approved, would create the Junk Vehicle Compliance Board, said Mike Arismendez, assistant to the City Council.

The new board would conduct public hearings regarding the removal of junk vehicles, an issue the Zoning Board of Adjustment currently oversees.

"This ordinance will set up a Junk Vehicle Compliance Board that will meet on a regular basis and be able to abate these junk vehicles," Arismendez said Wednesday.

The new board would meet more often than the ZBA does, perhaps every other week, speeding up the process from complaint to abatement, he said.

City officials developed the board idea following a recent presentation Police Chief Claude Jones gave to the council regarding code enforcement, Arismendez said. From that presentation, officials realized that the junk vehicle abatement process had been "bogged down," he said.

The new board would be made up primarily of community members, Arismendez said.

On another matter, the Council will consider for a second and final reading an ordinance to annex an area on the northwest side of Lubbock, bounded by Ursuline Street, North Frankford Avenue, Clovis Highway and North Quaker Avenue.

The area represents a pared down version of the city's original annexation plan, after area business and land owners voiced opposition to the initial plan in late January. The revised plan calls for annexing a stretch of farmland while leaving property and business owners adjacent to it in the county for now.